No Semblance of Sanity
by interdimensionalmeatpie
Summary: "I wonder... does Nora's Semblance of electricity have anything to do with the lights flickering when she's alone with Ren?" Join JNPR, RWBY, and Penny as shenanigans ensue after an eventful breakfast. Well, eventful for a few couples. Arkos, Nuts and Dolts if you squint, and Renora. Also, Ruby sorta ships the Bees. Sorta.
_A punderful title and the implications that there's gonna be a lot going down in this story? Yes. Enjoy, everyone._

 _Many thanks to Claraowl for working on these ideas with me. Check out her fics. Send her pancakes._

 _As usual, Thanks, Monty._

* * *

Pyrrha knew that Nora's Semblance came and went with her mood.

When Nora was sad, predictably, her Semblance was relatively subdued. When Nora was excited, well, Ren's nickname for her of "lightning bug" really made sense. Pyrrha chuckled quietly to herself as she remembered one particularly eventful night where a trailer for a movie about sloths came on; Nora had grown more and more excited until her electric field grew powerful enough to fry the TV and every electronic device in the room.

But what did it mean when the lights all the way here in the dining hall were flickering?

Pyrrha shook her head and rested her head slowly on the dining room table with a groan, prompting a reassuring pat from Jaune and a confused look from team RWBY and Penny on the other side of the table.

It didn't really take a genius to figure out that Ren and Nora were involved, in more ways than one.

Considering their transgressions also weren't all that discreet either…

Today had started with a team breakfast, or, they had planned so. Rather, Ren and Nora had declined to leave as early as they had planned, promising to meet up in about fifteen minutes.

Their proposed team breakfast had ended up more like a morning meal for two (plus team RWBY and Penny), as the fifteen had turned into twenty, then thirty, and now, according to Penny, about an hour, twelve minutes, forty milliseconds...

And there was the small matter of the lights starting to flicker somewhat rhythmically around the thirty minute mark.

It was quite... _distracting_.

Pyrrha lifted her head just in time to see Jaune's sympathetic expression flicker and disappear as the lights flashed furiously and winked completely out. Such would seem that… um...

She shuddered.

"Hey Pyrrha? You ok? You look scared… Are there demons or something messing with the lights?" Ruby had quipped up from the other side of the table, a look of concern evident on the young huntress's face. Pyrrha mumbled a negative reply, her head still buried in her arms on the table.

"You sure? I could scare them off with Crescent Rose if they're bothering you too much!"

" _Ifffh fhhhhh."_

 _"_ Come again?"

Pyrrha sighed deeply. " _No, Ruby, I-I'm fine…"_

 _"Sure?"_ Ruby took that moment to chamber a round into Crescent Rose, her grin fading slightly as the prospect of using her scythe grew dim. It vanished altogether as Professor Goodwitch, making her rounds in the lunchroom, stopped to place a detention slip before her for having a weapon drawn in a public space.

"But there's demons or something in the lights!" Ruby called after the retreating professor, before sulking and sprawling out on the table. "And now I can't kill them..."

"It's all right, sis!" Yang smiled reassuringly at Ruby. "We have that mission later in what's left of Mountain Glenn-"

" _It's not the same!"_ Ruby wailed theatrically.

" _Buuuut_ it _is_ an opportunity to- ah ha ha ha _ha ha ha HA **HA!**_ " Yang's head suddenly snapped towards the entrance, where the door had opened to reveal a couple, one with an absurdly static-fluffed shock of hair and a (more than) slightly rumpled green tailcoat, and the other with flaming orange hair and an ecstatic grin as she bounced jauntily towards the table.

"Hey there guys!" Yang called out to the approaching couple, a rakish smirk spreading across her face. "How are the 'kisses' nowadays? _Electric?"_

"Certainly, he replied nonchalantly, letting out a little huff of laughter as Nora popped up beside him and smooched him quickly on the cheek, as if on cue. "That reminds me, we need to get our Scrolls replaced again," he remarked, tossing the still-sparking remains of his device onto the table.

"Is...that even safe?" Blake eyed the wreckage with a look of revulsion. Ren moved to respond, but was cut off by Pyrrha meekly raising a finger.

"Ren? Nora?" Pyrrha asked, her voice a timid squeak. "We… We need to talk to you about how the lights keep flickering every time you guys end up alone…"

Ren had suddenly found the ground by his shoes extremely captivating, trying (and failing) to push his staticky hair down as he stared downwards. His partner, however, had no such reservations about answering such questions.

"What about it?"

"It- It's starting to become a problem… I think we need to fix it before…" Pyrrha blushed even harder, her words trailing off into nothingness.

"Before what?"

"Before the problem gets any worse, of course," Ruby interjected. "Maybe it's a demon, like I said earlier..." Her eyes lit up again as she looked up hopefully, reaching behind her for Crescent Rose before Weiss slapped her hand away.

"Did you think there was a demon in the lights or something?" Nora looked confused, squinting through the darkness at Ruby. "Because I think that's just my Semblance messing with the lights. Electricity, I mean! Not demons." Nora's eyes suddenly lit up. "Ooooh, _demons?_ That would be super cool! I could reign as queen of demons and purge the world of Grimm-"

"Demons would probably side with the Grimm, Nora," Ren reminded her.

"Oh yeah, that's right! That's why I've got electricity instead!"

"Why- why… umm-" Pyrrha stammered. "Why would your electric field be flaring-"

Alas, Pyrrha had witnessed enough, simply regressing to a thousand yard stare while Jaune huddled in his seat beside her, staring down into his empty plate. Across the table, Yang was quivering with suppressed laughter, her hair flaring up with light, while Blake had stuffed her face into her book feigning ignorance (rather poorly). Weiss had clamped her hands across a very perplexed Ruby's ears as Penny analyzed the situation at hand.

"Pyrrha Nikos," Penny began, "It seems as if your teammate is talking about her Semblance engaging in resonance with the human act of _mmmmph-_

Weiss had shot into action, grabbing a cookie and holding it in front of a delighted (and most importantly, distracted) Ruby while she quickly threw her free hand over Penny's mouth, glaring at Ren and Nora with all the iciness northern Atlas had to offer.

"You guys are disgusting," she hissed.

"Pretty conspicuous as well," Jaune added. "Just look at your hair, Ren!"

At the mention of conspicuity, Ren looked up and tilted his head to eye his team leader with an air of amusement.

"Conspicuous, you say? At least we weren't the ones who bent the metal bedframes all out of shape after... what is it that you and Pyrrha call it? _Card tournaments?"_

* * *

"Ozpin, have you reviewed the latest batch of applications? We need to finalize and send out acceptance or denial letters by the end of the month."

A very stressed Glynda Goodwitch strode into the headmaster's office, papers spilling from her arms. When Professor Ozpin failed to respond, she repeated her query.

"…Ozpin?"

She received no reply, instead receiving a raised finger from Ozpin, who beckoned her to listen closely.

Goodwitch heard nothing aside from the clicking of the gears in the room at first, but as she strained to listen...

"Ozpin... is somebody... _screaming?"_

* * *

"Penny, I'm bored."

Ruby hopped down from her perch on the bunk bed, landing gracefully on the floor besides Penny. "There's been nothing to do and everyone else is out with JNPR or something…"

"Indeed. I have run over seventeen self-diagnostic cycles as a way to keep myself occupied, but now, without better things to keep myself occupied. I am experiencing boredom. Do you have any ideas, Ruby?"

"Hmmm… Remember what Ren said at lunch?"

"Ah, his allusions to the human act of-"

"No no, not that," Ruby cut in. "The thing about how Jaune and Pyrrha always seem to end up breaking their bedframes when they get bored. They seem to enjoy it."

Penny frowned. "I believe that is destruction of school property."

"But I guess Pyrrha can use her Semblance to fix them. They are metal bedframes after all… No harm, no foul?"

"Why though? I cannot think of any good reason." Penny still looked perplexed.

"I dunno. Maybe they're some of those modern art types."

At the notion of 'art,' Penny perked up.

"Oh, Ruby! That sounds absolutely spectacular! How would you like to create modern art with me?"

"I don't see why not _._ We just need to get Pyrrha to fix it later." With that, Ruby grabbed Crescent Rose, cutting the rope holding the bed to the ceiling and helping Penny muscle it to the floor.

* * *

"Are you _sure_ this is modern art? Because it looks like we just crushed it." Ruby eyed the wreckage that was once a bed with a skeptical eye. The two new connoisseurs of the arts stood before it, arms folded with looks of apprehension on their faces.

"Well, I believe this is a prime example," Penny added. "A strange tangle of metal that represents-"

" _Yeahhhh,_ but I think we were supposed to remove the mattress before we started working on the bedframes. Pyrrha can fix those but I don't think she could fix the mattress…"

"We aren't really that strong," Penny lamented. "I visited the Atlas Museum of Arts one time and they managed to bend metal in ways I never thought possible, instead of simply crushing their material. We may need more strength or some heavy machinery to attempt things of that caliber."

"But hey, we did our best!" Ruby smiled, pulling out her Scroll to snap a picture of their work. "I call it: _Vertically Compressed Bed in D Minor."_

Penny giggled, resting her hands on her hips as she beheld their 'creation.'

"According to my databases, I could categorize this art as a neo- _avant-garde_ sculpture. I highly approve of it. But isn't D Minor a musical concept though-"

Just then, the opening of the door heralded the return of Weiss, Blake, and Yang, who stopped dead in their tracks as they beheld the scene of Ruby and Penny standing triumphantly before a wrecked bed.

"Oh, hey everyone! We heard Ren say at lunch that Jaune and Pyrrha break their beds all the time! He says they have tons of fun doing it; well, we certainly did! "

"It was an excellent team bonding experience," Penny offered.

The other members of team RWBY could do naught but sit and stare in horror, clearly lacking the ability to form words, frozen in time until-

 _"Hey Yang,_ " Ruby piped up, " _Maybe you and Blake should try it sometime! It's sooooooo fun!"_

And there, at that moment, the light left from Yang Xiao Long's eyes, never to return.

* * *

 _Well, I guess you could call the majority of my works as an "everyone lives" AU. I guess?_

 _Unfortunately, in this case, I guess Jaune and Yang just died... and Pyrrha maybe._

 _RIP in pepperonis._

 _Buuuuut at least we've got my OTPs all in a basket here. They deserve this happiness. And life, can't forget life, eh? Can't have happiness without life. (and with life comes fluff. Which I thrive on.)_

 _i-Pie_


End file.
